Mr Drake's Duck (1951) User Reviews

An English version of Green Acres with uranium.

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 9 May 2004]

In one of his last feature films Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. plays American expatriate Donald Drake who has inherited a farm in Sussex where he has brought his new bride to settle. Kind of an English version of Green Acres. His bride is also an American, Yolande Donlon. She's very much like Eva Gabor and there are the English rustic types just like on Green Acres.

Yolande goes on a shopping trip to town with their hired hand Jon Pertwee and while waving to him at an auction she accidentally buys five dozen ducks. So far so good, but one of the ducks turns out to lay uranium eggs with a lead shell. In come all the British armed services, quarantining the Fairbanks farm and turning his honeymoon into a nightmare. Adding to their problems the Doug and Yolande are also trapped with Jon Pertwee and their loan officer from the bank, a handyman, and an official from the Agricultural Ministry all of whom happen to be on the premises when the quarantine order is issued.

It's an amusing film, nothing terribly spectacular about it. I always enjoy seeing Jon Pertwee in anything. Back when the Doctor Who show was run on American television he was my favorite of all the actors who played the Doctor.

Yolande Donlon was competent enough, but if the film had been made five years later, Marilyn Monroe would have been a natural for the part.

My only question is, why didn't the British Army just take the ducks instead of quarantining the farm. Because there would have been no film at all.

Good Cast But Script Lays An Egg

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 1 October 2013]

This film has a good cast.Three of the actors,Wilfred Hyde White,Jon Pertwee and Peter Butterworth ,would become well known for their film and TV roles in the years that followed.It is therefore a shame that the writers could not produce a funny script.Director Guest only has himself and Ian Messiter to blame.Messiter was the originator of the BBC radio programme ^Just A Minute".A sure fine of the desperation of writers is when they repeat a gag,in this case the Bren carrier knocking over the gate post every time it enters and exits.Fairbanks wisely saw the writing on the wall and was far more involved in TV from here on in.Donlan gives the sort of performance that she gave in all the other films she made with Guest.

Fairbanks must have been desperate for the money

[wildfire160 · 5/10 · 8 July 2002]

There is quite a good cast for this film but most of them are woefully wasted,for the life of me how Douglas Fairbanks got himself involved in this piece of fluff escapes me on all whole a very average film

THE EGG AND I in the Atomic Age

[boblipton · 6/10 · 5 September 2017]

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. takes his new bride, ditzy Yolande Donlan, to his decrepit farm. When Ms. Donlan purchases six dozen ducks by accident, they soon discover one lays eggs with uranium in the shell. Within short order they are occupied by the Army, the Navy and the R.A.F., who want the duck and its ability to separate out the element for national service.

It's an exceedingly silly comedy, written and directed by Miss Donlan's husband, Val Guest, with plenty of fine comedy players in the cast: Jon Pertwee as their rustic farmhand, Reuben; Peter Butterworth as the handyman who feuds constantly with Mr. Pertwee; Wilfred Hyde-White, A.E. Matthews and Reginald Beckwith are on hand for the fun. It's not a great comedy, by any means, but it proceeds at such a hectic pace -- Mr. Guest had gotten his training as a writer for Walter Forde and Marcel Varnel -- that the time flew happily by.

Uranium eggs will make Mr. Drake quack up.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 28 November 2019]

Everything's just ducky down on Mr. Drake's Green Acres, the actual name of the British farm where Douglas Fairbanks Jr. brings dizzy new wife Yolande Donlan following their marriage. Accidentally purchasing five dozen ducks, Donlan upsets the apple cart of the farming, unaware that the lack of a pen will impact how they keep the friendly (and constant) quackers under control. Attempting to crack the shell of a duck egg breakfast, Fairbanks ends up with a bing sound rather than a cracking sound. Fairbanks' financial advisor ("My Fair Lady's" Wilfred Hyde White) takes the strange egg with the green yolk to be investigated, and much to their surprise, they learn that one of their ducks is laying uranium filled eggs!

This silly comedy has some very funny moments especially as the invasion of the British army turns Fairbanks farm upside down, but ultimately it reveals nothing about how an ordinary egg can be filled with uranium and even worse how Fairbanks can get rid of the ducks and the army as uranium eggs keep being discovered. It's a cute little farm comedy along the lines of "The Egg and I" and "Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House", but without a real story and thus without a point other than the fact that the military will take over your land if they see a reason to do so. Fairbanks and Donlan give decent performances as the perplexed farmer and his wife, but Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor have nothing to worry about.

This is a charming bit of fluff

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 16 October 2022]

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Becomes a gentleman farmer on a run-down old farm in England. Yolande Donlan is his bride who wants to learn all about farming and is as handy as a drunken octopus in a leaky pickle barrel. Her education into all things agricultural includes her first visit to a cattle auction where she accidentally buys sixty ducks. The duck egg which she fixes for her husband's breakfast the next day has a green yolk which attracts the attention of a local bureaucrat who is delivering some of the myriad forms which are required when farming in England. He sends it off for analysis and the army, admiralty and R. A. F. Quickly descend on the farm when it is found the egg contains uranium.

This is not high art nor intense drama but it is a quite enjoyable way to spend an hour and fifteen minutes.

I was surprised to find that Yolande Donlan did not have a more extensive career. Her performance is charming and I would have thought that being paired with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Should have been a sort of passport to good roles before health issues affected her work.

I am sure that some will recognize Jon Pertwee. He plays here a general farm hand. This is nearly twenty years prior to his appearance in: Doctor Who. He actually looks older in this role than he did in 1970!

Wilfrid Hyde-White is perfect as the officious bureaucrat who unwittingly causes so much chaos.

Many of the other actors are very familiar as veteran character actors in English movies of the era and all perform well.

We began watching this on: Amazon Prime but that copy ends a full twenty minutes early and so we had to go to: YouTube to watch the ending.

I give this a 9/10 for what it is. It lost a point merely because it began repeating gags near the end.